Walter Thurman

Fellowship Director, Senior Fellow

Wally Thurman is a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University and a PERC Senior Fellow. Thurman was a PERC 2003 Julian Simon Fellow, a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, and a recipient of that organization’s Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award as well as awards for his published research, and has also has served as an editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Thurman studies the economics and political economy of agricultural and natural resource policy and has published widely on these topics. His published work includes empirical studies of the drivers of land trust growth, quota schemes in the United States for peanuts and tobacco, analysis of the effects of the Clean Water and Clear Air Acts, and compensation schemes in agricultural industries. Thurman is currently studying land trusts, markets for honey bee pollination services, and the economics of adaptation to environmental change. Thurman earned a B.A. degree in Environmental Studies from Utah State University, a Master’s degree in Economics from Montana State University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

PERC scholars compare the Conservation and Wetland Reserves, both federal programs, with two private land trusts,The Nature Conservancy and the Land Trust Alliance,to determine their influence on each other.